Day 19. Summer.

To me, summer is filled with the music of cicadas. I must warn you, if you haven't already peeked below, there is a BUG at the end of this post... DON'T TURN THE PAGE! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!??! DON'T YOU KNOW THERE IS A BUG AT THE END OF THE STORY?!?? You turned the page... This is how I know summer is coming to a close. When I see these big @$$ bug carcases hanging from the trees it's OVER people!

On a slightly different note... The last year my Grandmother was alive, she made the trek up to West Virginia for her final family reunion. My sister and I, found one of these cicada shells one morning at the cabin and placed it's fragile carcass in the refrigerator right at her Mammaw's level. While fixing her cereal my sister and I sat at the bar snickering and holding our bellies in hopes to get a rise out of her. ((At this point, I was 4 months along in my pregnancy with Lillie, my Mammaw passed away 4 months later.)) That woman KNEW we were up to no good and IGNORED that creepy @$$ carcass and kept on with her day. Our mother made us toss it at some point because, HELLO... did I mention it was creepy? And we had it staring at you straight in the face every time the refrigerator door was opened. Not being right in the head runs in the family obviously, and it's a shame my mother missed the "shenanigans" and "inappropriate laughter" gene. When my sister and I get together that's all we're capable of being... most days.

The Tibicen genus of cicadas are large-bodied Cicadidae appearing in late summer or autumn. Like other members of the subfamily Cicadinae, they have loud, complex songs, even (in many cases) distinct song phrases. Tibicen are the most common cicada in the United States. Unlike periodical cicadas, whose swarms occur at 13- or 17-year intervals, Tibicen species can be seen every year, hence their nickname "annual cicadas." The lifecycle of an individual, however, is more than a year. Nymphs spend two or three years feeding on tree roots before they emerge. Their annual reappearance is due to overlapping generations. Many other colloquial names exist for Tibicens: locust, dog day cicada, harvest fly, August dry bird, jar fly, bush cicada.

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia